


The Long Winter

by aceofreaders (Kickasscookieeater)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (but nuh uh no way he won't say it), AFTG Holiday Fanzine, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Pining, Winter fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 11:33:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17161232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kickasscookieeater/pseuds/aceofreaders
Summary: Winter is long.Winter is cold.Winter is sharp and icy and white and gray.Winter is alone (without him).--Andrew Minyards' first winter in Boston. Alone.





	The Long Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays! 
> 
> This was the winter-based fic I wrote for the AFTG Holiday Fanzine Heathens Greetings 2018, from which all profits go to Lost-N-Found Youth. Writing this was more than writing a fic for me. This was the first time I really opened myself up to fandom. Writing Andrews' first winter alone, was my first time NOT feeling alone in the fandom I guess. I know I'm being cheesy but hey, it's Christmas. Thank you to all the heathens I met taking part in this, you all made me feel so welcome and you're all so damn funny and talented. 
> 
> So please check out the zine at aftgholidayzine on tumblr, not for me, but for my beloved Heathens and Lost-N-Found Youth.

He’s standing in Boston Logan International Airport at some terminal or another. There’s snow outside the windows and Christmas everywhere else. Andrew has his noise cancelling headphones on again, and the silence is as effective as usual.

It’s December, obviously, and he feels it in his bones where the cold leaks through the glass surfaces of window and skin. His eyes feel it too, held open and vulnerable by the winter. Standing inside the airport doesn’t help much. His body always did have trouble letting go. 

Someone a few feet away starts to scream, a child. Shrill enough to break through the noiselessness and Andrew wonders not for the first time if he wasted his money, then if he wasted his time making his money, then why he’s wasting his quiet thinking about it at all. 

The child is still screaming but it’s a dull sound in the background of Andrews' own dullness, staring out the window with his hands in his black coat pockets. 

He’s preparing himself for feeling. For fear. He doesn’t have time to scream. Never has.

In the corner of his eye he sees a woman, with a bag full of Christmas presents at her feet as she sits speaking into her phone. She looks like the past. She reminds him. So he keeps her hidden in the corner of his eye. Before him is the airplane he will soon be boarding, and there’s a man in a flight attendants’ uniform and a Santa hat. He reminds Andrew too. 

So instead he stares at the snow, at the white white white and the footprints and the bare dark ground where it’s been shoved away. He stares at the window itself, where the winter has crept along the glass like spectral fingertips, pleading. 

He remembers why he’s here.

He’s not quite prepared yet, but the fear is nearing anyway, and the woman and her presents are gone. The dim reflections in the glass are melting together as they move. Andrew lets the noise back in, follows the mass. 

He keeps his eyes firmly closed, his fists tightly clenched, and his memories auburn and orange. By the time Andrews' feet touch dry South Carolina ground, he’s ready to face the fear.

-

Neils' eyes when he opens the store wrapped camera box are cliff edges over an open ocean.

\---

It’s just turned January, there are Foxes yelling, and it’s all rather excessive. There’s silver and gold confetti in the air and booze spilled onto the pavement outside Fox Tower. On Neil’s face are a giant pair of metallic pink glasses, a quiet grin, and lipstick stains the colour of Allison and Dans’ laughs. Andrew is relatively sure he has glitter in his hair. 

It’s something like a reunion, new Foxes not included because frankly who cares. Robin would have been the only exception if it weren’t for the flu she’s currently bedridden with. Kevin is neck deep in a bottle of something, Nicky is attempting to lift Aaron and spin him, and Matt is running around the group in circles hollering. Renee stands quietly next to Andrew, watching him watching Neil being crushed by the dual embrace of Allison and Dan. 

It’s almost like going back in time. 

Andrew lasts another half an hour with his bottle of whiskey. Someone brought speakers with them, and the noise makes it easy to hide. He’s thinking about his flight today, about Aarons' right before his, about Germany and Exy stadiums and distance. He’s thinking about how much he doesn’t want to think. For once, Andrew would rather feel. 

All it takes is one finger linked through another and through those stupid glasses Neil looks at him and smiles. They leave those glasses behind.

Andrews' new year starts at 1:00am on the rooftop, when Andrews' hands smear with lipstick and Neils' sigh bleeds into Andrews choked breath, and Andrew feels feels feels. 

\--- 

‘I miss you.’

It’s still January, and Andrew is knee deep in bitter snow outside his building.

‘I’ve never had to miss someone before.’

He watches his exhale hit the air, watches it spread like a cloud of smoke. 

‘At least not like this.’

Andrew reaches his hand in front of his face to watch his gloveless fingers turn red. 

‘I think I hate it.’

His eyes close with the heaviness of his lashes, and he lets the snowflakes fall from them as they please.

‘It’s just…not the same.’

Maybe he should have worn a coat.

‘I think I’m lonely Andrew.’

He definitely should have worn a coat. Boston winter is so unforgiving.

\--- 

The snow is falling into Andrews' hair and it’s early February. His team issued practice bag swings at his side, reminding him with every nudge against his body that this day has been long enough already. He catches his reflection in the glass of a bookstore and sighs. 

He doesn’t particularly feel like doing this. 

There’s a balloon drifting past him, lost by a slender young hand as its owner wraps her arms around her new fiancée. He finds himself caught by that balloon, watching it fade into the open night sky, forgotten. 

The air is biting at his skin and there are no stars out tonight. 

He really doesn’t feel like doing this. 

He listens to the crunch of his boots in a fresh snow bank as he passes, stares ahead of him at the patches of dusty white on the sidewalk. Everything in the winter is so bare.

A gust of wind parts around him, leaving tiny icicles in Andrews' lungs. He can see the sign up ahead.

When he opens the door the ice on the ground blows in with him, and when he sits down opposite a steaming hot chocolate he looks up into his own reflection. 

-

It’s not like Andrew doesn’t already know, it was obvious from the phone call, Aarons' voice saying ‘I need to tell you something. I think it should be in person’. He still feels though.

‘She said yes.’

And he looks happy and scared and defensive all at once, but Andrew can only say:

‘I’ll be there.’

The silence that follows is as fragile as the look on Aarons' face.

It’s been a while since the last time they did this, just the two of them. Since the last time they looked each other in their hazel eyes. There’s still snow in Andrews' lashes. The ice in Aarons' has already melted.

‘Do you miss him?’

Andrews' not sure why Aaron even bothers asking when he doesn’t seem to want to. He has that sharp turn to his lips. He must be looking for something. Andrew doesn’t deign to answer, and the next words that come seem to be more resented than the last. More fearful. More longing. 

‘Do you miss me?’

What an interesting, stupid, pointless question. Andrews' reply comes with a slow blink of his eyes and a twitch in his right hand under the table.

‘Do you miss _me_?’

‘No.’

There’s something to be said about being twins. Because for two brothers raised apart, they have remarkably similar tells when they lie.

\---

Mid-February finds two young men, one blonde one burned, buried in the snow. They’re not making snow angels because they don’t believe in them. 

It’s a Saturday morning, and Andrew spent the day before watching Neils' face change.  
Sometimes his smile would match the bright glare of the snow. Sometimes his eyes would match the frost. Sometimes the turn of his lips would match the dark winter sky. 

Today, nothing about Neil matches the world. His presences disrupts the stillness of the cold like a blazing sun. 

‘Shouldn’t you have practice this weekend Captain?’ Andrews' voice is muffled by the snow, but they’re so close underneath it all that it doesn’t matter. 

‘Not exactly.’ Neils' voice says the words while the set of his sharp jaw says a little bit more.

‘Why?’ escapes Andrew like a breeze. 

Neil doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Andrew with something terrible in his eyes that looks an awful lot like a feeling echoing somewhere in Andrew. 

The winter is awfully long in Boston. At least compared to South Carolina. 

There are thick black gloves on Neils' hands, a gift from Nicky himself this time. Andrew was the one to throw them at Neils' head this morning though before they left. Now, he studies the thread of a fingertip. 

He must have fought to be here, fought those young Foxes and Wymack. Even then, it’s not for much longer. 

‘Neil.’

It’s almost a whisper, it’s almost angry, and they push that slightest bit closer through the snow till their noses brush together. 

When Andrew closes his eyes he feels their lashes tangle. 

\--- 

March arrives and the winter is refusing to die. There’s glass in the air of Boston Common.

Andrew is sat on a bench covered in frost, feeling it seep into his coat, watching the brave skate on Frog Pond. The wind is missing, the sky is blindingly blue and bare, and there’s a voice in his ear.

‘So yeah that was my week. Oh except that I forgot to tell you that um, Erik says hi. And um, how was it?’

‘How was what?’

‘Andrew come on, how was practice?’

‘It was practice.’

‘Andrew _seriously_. Last time we talked remember, you promised? You promised me you would actually talk more.’

Some bird is valiantly trying to sing through the cold, nestled in the branches of a leafless tree overhead.

‘I promised nothing of the sort.’

‘Okay well I took your silence as agreement.’

When will birds learn when to stop singing.

‘That’s not how promises work Nicky.’

‘I know Andrew. I know.’

Maybe there is a little winter wind left, Andrew thinks he saw some branches move. A dead leaf stirring on the ground. 

‘Hey Andrew, have you talked to Kevin recently? Neil said he wasn’t sure when you guys last talked.’

No, it’s just a dead leaf.

‘We’ve spoken.’

‘Okay well, maybe speak again? Soon? I just think it’d be nice. For both of you. Also has Neil gotten taller? Or maybe he’s just gotten cuter. It’s hard to tell over Skype. You saw him recently right?'

‘In February.’

‘Oh. I miss that kid.’

-

By the time Andrew leaves Boston Common the sun is already setting on the frozen surface of Frog Pond.

Now, he’s sat with his bag rattling along on the number 7 to City Point, almost there. The wind is still absent but the chill batters the bus anyway, and by the time it jolts to a stop Andrews' bones are sore.

As soon as his feet hit the icy ground he begins to walk, slowly, through the ache. He watches South Boston pass by in shades of grey and black and white, the grey of his demeanour, the black of his coat, the white of his skin passing through it all silently. It takes six minutes and he’s there. 

For a building full of semi-wealthy inhabitants, its’ elevator still feels like a slow death, so Andrew takes the stairs all the way to the top. The snow breaks off his boots a little more with every step, and the last remains get left to melt on the mat inside his door. 

His coat he hangs up next to the side table where he throws his keys, and as he crosses briefly to the open living space for the remote, the TV begins to play. 

‘Tonight’s game is one we’ve all been waiting for…’ 

His boots come off next, replaced by charcoal slippers because Neil knows better then to give him orange. The kitchen light floods the counter-tops as Andrew reaches up to the cupboard. The cocoa, cinnamon, and vanilla all meet quietly on the granite. 

‘Do you think the crowd is ready…’

From the fridge Andrew grabs the milk, and he measures it out in a mug with Nickys' face on it.

‘…He’s the greatest striker the sports ever seen!...’

It heats on the stove, and Andrew leaves it to close the curtains and turn up the thermostat. 

‘…I’m just excited, I don’t know what to tell you. I get chills every time...’

Andrew stands there and stirs. The room starts to warm, the ingredients start to mix. 

‘…Okay here we go, the teams are about to step onto the court…’

Andrew grabs a handfuls of marshmallows and drops them in until the mug near overflows. The steam rises up past the white, and Andrew allows the heat to burn his hand as he settles on the couch. His body always wants to hoard the cold. 

‘Are you ready to see Kevin Day in action?’

\---

The winter in Boston is long. The cold of it reaches where cold never should, and it sets white fire to the hollows of Andrews' chest. 

Everything is ice and snow, wind and hail, chill and white white white. Andrew could disappear in the snow if he wanted to. 

It lasts until early April. That’s when the ice starts to thaw, when the snow starts to shy away. A few leaves start to appear on the trees of Boston Common and no one is skating anymore. 

When winter ends, Andrew has learned to survive it. 

\--- 

He’s standing in Boston Logan International Airport. There’s snow outside the windows and Christmas everywhere else. 

It’s December, obviously. 

There’s still snow on Andrews' boots that hasn’t melted off yet. It’s dusting his black woollen hat too, drifting down from it into his eyes just a little bit. He’s still cold, hands still shoved in his black coat pockets, but it’s ebbing away ever so slightly. 

He waits. 

He stares at the busyness surrounding him. 

The snow that clung to him before melts away. 

And Neil is here. 

He’s just staring at Andrew, because of course he is. And he’s so present, so blue and grey and auburn, one bag slung over his shoulder and one hand reaching out from his side. Andrew moves because of course he does. 

Their fingertips meet, then their fingers, then their palms, then their eyes. Andrew tugs and Neil follows and they’re both caught. 

\--- 

‘They’re still not Foxes.’

‘They don’t need to be.’

‘I know.’

There are three blankets and a Neil keeping Andrew warm. The blankets rest around his shoulders, and Neil rests his hand on Andrews' ankle. Neils' camera has taken four pictures already, and it rests on the arm of the couch. 

‘Have you ever considered a Christmas tree in here?’

‘I have one. Several actually.’

‘Those marshmallows Nicky sent you don’t count.’

‘I don’t care.’

Neil is smiling, quietly. He doesn’t seem to notice. Andrew knows that Neil has missed him. 

He rests his head against Neils', watches those bright eyes blink slowly closed. He feels Neils' sigh against his skin, places a kiss over the subtle parting of his lips. When Neil opens his eyes again, he looks proud and happy and stunned like he always does these days.

‘Neil.'

It’s almost a whisper. 

Neil just looks at him, body held still. Those bright winter eyes. 

‘I missed you.’

This is Andrews' second Boston winter, and he knows how to survive it better this time.


End file.
